sau bao

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Vancouver was getting more recipes from my mother. I was in the city for my dad’s birthday and we celebrated in the morning by steaming up some sau bau. They’re steamed buns filled with an eggy custard filling called lai wong haam in Cantonese. The buns are painted with pink dye so that they look more like the stylized Chinese peach. Mom had freezed a bag full of sau bao before her surgery. It took her awhile to figure out how to paint the buns, back when she was first figuring out how to make sau bao. I think she was pretty proud of the method she finally settled on – dip a toothbrush in the food colouring and then flick the dye onto the buns. Beats buying an air brusher. I have yet to make the buns myself but I’m eager to try it. Peaches are supposed to symbolize immortality. People are also supposed to eat chow mein on their birthdays because the long noodles symbolize longevity. I wonder if the focus on long life is an offshoot of the concept of showing respect for elders. Birthdays of elderly people carry more weight and importance than that of children. I think the thinking is that celebrating a seven-year-old’s birthday is pretty common – but how many people can say they’ve celebrated their 81st birthday?